Customer Reviews

The New Father: A Dad's Guide to the Toddler Years (New Father)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Since the birth of my nineteen-month-old daughter, I've been reading a lot of books about babies and parenting. By accident, I found this one. Simply put, this is a terrific book. It's a welcome antidote to all those that assume only the mom will be the hands-on parent. It's also full of sound advice and delivers its message in the perfect parenting tone -- patient, amused, astonished -- with a keen understanding of the bewilderment and frustration we all go through. My hat is off to the author for his fine work.

I actually gave the book to my husband for father's day, but have been snatching it from him to read myself. We have several friends who are about to have new babies -- I'm planning to give them copies of the author's book covering the first year as shower gifts.

For nineteen months I've been reading about parenthood and pointing out this and that passage in some parenting book to my husband. In every case, the book spoke about the mother's role, but the father was at best a shadowy figure who might help out once in a while. Given that my husband and I have had the pleasure of fully co-parenting, we were delighted to find a book focused on being a hands-on dad.

Again, bravo to the author for a fine success.

Great boook. Continuing wisdom from the guy who's really made it possible for me and so many dads I know to be as involved with our kids as we want to be. I've followed this whole series from The Expectant Father, A Dad's Guide to the First Year, and now this one. It gave me a ton of information--not only on what my child was going through, but also on what I was going through. It really helped reassure me that what I was feeling was normal.

No question that this book has made me a better dad. Just ask my son.

I bought this book after reading his book on the First Year. Organized in the same manner as the first, except divided into three month periods instead of one month, I found it again informative and funny. The information about temperaments was especially useful. We found books that became some of my daughter's favorites in the lists that he provides. Also, we are following Mr. Brott's advice about allowances and find that we are all learning. Now that my wife is pregnant again, I'm reading the Expectant Father and I expect I'll be re-reading the First Year and the Toddler Years books.

My dad gave me this book before my son as 6 months old so I put it away. He's now 20 months and I've found it again. I'm so glad! I feel like I can contribute more to the discussions my wife and I have about our son. I think she enjoys not being the only one that has a clue about what's going on with him developmentally.

More than that, it's great to read about parenting from another dad. Most books like this don't deal with things like wills and college planning. Brott does AND makes it interesting. I've read alot of parenting books but it's great to compliment those with the breadth of Brott's overview and insights.

Armin Brott writes terrific parenting books for Dads. They are well researched and the tone is encouraging and friendly. This particular book does a great job of providing insight into the challenges of the toddler years -- why they are such a challenge for parents and toddlers alike. Excellent book.

I love this series of books because they read fast and are humorous. My husband enjoyed the first book so much I got him this second one and many times there were things that my parenting books did not have. He enjoyed the humor and the fact that you can pick up and put these books down any time.

Maybe it was here I read it: once married, you think you'll never fall in love again. All the more a surprise then that once you have a baby, you keep falling in love with her. More and more every week. Sometimes every day. On vacation, it's hourly, as I see changes in her by the minute, learning skills like how to slip a star-ring over and onto its little spindle. Huge! So I liked this book, partly because it helped me appreciate every detail of Catherine's development, starting each month with what's gone with the baby physically, intellectually, verbally, emotionally/socially. Then what's you're going through, including how to help your partner. But the best part was this table of benefits and costs of "involved fathering;" I was blown away by how it articulated the satisfaction of watching her grow, pride that you've achieved something meaningful, love received, personal self-discipline and role modeling, percetual shift/expanded self through increased interest in family, a legacy, lifelong learning just to keep up with kids, life purpose and direction and shared focus in marriage (pp. 204-205). While it wasn't lyrical like Lamott's great book Operating Instructions, I liked its action ideas, like pointing and naming everything in sight, and ways to talk. Like using "no" and "don't" minimally, and instead specifying "It's not safe to try to put things in outlets"--I even use a lower voice so that she doesn't get drama out of "no." I'm only sad bottle feedings have ended, so I've lost that time reading. I'd grade it a B+.

This author does a great job of covering all you will need to know in becoming a dad. This and the other books in this series are well written and an easy read. Highly recommended!

I was really excited about this book..at least until I read it. Granted, I only read a few chapters then decided it wasn't worth my time, but I felt like this book didn't say much about the actual child. It was more of what the dad should be doing (like great detail on how to save up for the child's college). That's good info but I bought the book to learn about stages of my child's development and different techniques to handle these, not finances. So yes, this book is probably good for a very specific target group (let's say 9-5 job upper middle class 30+ year old father with the traditional role) but didn't apply to our equal responsibility, equal respect, young, just barely making it financially, household.

I got this book from the library because I thought it would be something great for my husband to read. Of course, I flipped through it first--and wow--did it freak me out. I'm not sure where this guy got his age-appropriate behaviors he listed, but he had me thinking (after reading about two pages) that my 20-month-old is seriously behind in practically every single skill! My experienced mom friends tell me not to read these type of parenting books because they will just make me crazy, and I have to admit they're right. I don't have the book in front of me anymore (it went straight back to the library) but it said things like "At age 21-24 months, your child should be able to...draw a straight line, dress himself, etc." WHAT? I told my friends that, and they immediately told me their THREE YEAR OLDS couldn't do that stuff.

So, while there might be some good daddy/toddler information in there, I didn't get to it, because the other stuff overwhelmed me and freaked me out enough that I stopped right there.